Examines nursing as it has developed under different regimes and ideologies and at different times around the world. Highlights the role of politics and gender and proposes strategies for achieving greater recognition for the profession.

A quiet revolution has been sweeping through the writing of nursing history over the last decade. Nursing history has been transformed from an internalist and triumphalist form of professional apologetics to a robust and reflective area of scholarship. The seventeen international contributors to this book look at nursing from different perspectives, as it has developed under different regimes and ideologies and at different times, in America, Australia, Britain, Germany, India, the Philippines and South Africa. They highlight the role of politics and gender in understanding nursing history and the part that history has to play in the education of nurses today.

'A claim is made in the Introduction that nursing history if in the process of becoming a "robust and reflective scholarship". This claim is borne out by the general excellence of the papers presented and the book would be a worthy addition to the shelves of nursing & midwifery departmental Libraries in particular, and social studies in general.' - International History of Nursing Journal'A breath of fresh air for teachers and students...should provide good bed-time reading for students coming up to exams. It should also occupy an important place on the bedroom shelf of any nurse with a professional interest in political issues.' - Nursing Times'A valuable asset to tutors wanting to interest students in wider horizons and in what happened the day before yesterday and why.' - Monica Baly, Journal of Advanced Nursing'Tackles some hitherto rather neglected but important issues in nursing history and continues with the trend set by Davies of looking at the experience of 'ordinary' nurses, rather than the 'heroic' figures around whom nursing history was so long focussed.' - British Journal of Midwifery